Adoption of DisplayPort Grows at Tremendous Pace - VESA

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has announced the organization has experienced tremendous growth in the number of PC displays adopting DisplayPort. Over the last 12 months, the number of PC display models with DisplayPort have increased by 160%. The overall number of SKUs is still well below that of devices featuring DVI or HDMI, but the DP is clearly becoming popular.

At present there are 78 display models from leading manufacturers such as Apple, Barco, Dell, Eizo Nanao, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, NEC, Philips, Samsung and Sony. Fueling the growth is the display industry’s recognition and optimism for the consumer market adoption and market saturation of DisplayPort, which is driving chipset, device and component manufacturers to replace legacy interfaces with DisplayPort.

DisplayPort significantly enhances display performance by doubling of the maximum data transfer rate to 21.6Gb/s (Gigabits-per-second), and increasing display resolution, color depths and refresh rates. In addition, DisplayPort now enables technology manufacturers to integrate numerous advanced features, including: multiple monitor support through a single DisplayPort connector; support for high-speed, bi-directional data transfer; audio enhancements including Audio Copy Protection and support for High-Definition (HD) audio formats such as Dolby, MAT, DTS HD, all Blu-Ray formats, and China’s DRA standard; and improved support for full HD stereoscopic 3D displays.

“The availability of streaming media and HD-quality broadcast content over the internet means many consumers now demand a TV-like experience on their PCs. These trends are driving the transition to DisplayPort at an astounding rate. The momentum we have achieved over the last year shows that the industry views DisplayPort as the best interface equipped to deliver this experience on the PC. We expect to see this momentum escalate even faster as the display manufacturers begin to take advantage of DisplayPort’s advanced features," said Bill Lempesis, executive director at VESA.

A year ago two leading suppliers of graphics cores that control the lion's share of the graphics adapters in the world (AMD and Intel), two world's largest display manufacturers (LG, Samsung) and Lenovo, a large maker of personal computers announced intentions to accelerate adoption of scalable and lower power digital interfaces such as DisplayPort and high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) into the PC. The plan means death sentence for previous-generation analogue display interfaces.

AMD plans to begin phasing out legacy interfaces, starting with the removal of native LVDS output from most products in 2013. The company also plans to remove native VGA output starting in 2013, with expansion to all AMD products by 2015. This would mean DVI-I support will be eliminated in the same timeframe. Intel plans to end support of LVDS in 2013 and VGA in 2015 in its PC client processors and chipsets. Together AMD and Intel controlled nearly 80% of graphics adapters market in Q2 2011, according to Jon Peddie Research.